Blue Peter

No Blue peter facebook page, or twitter account. Does the current BP talk about Internet? fitness? hobbies places to go?

I have notice its seems to have more Chat music than it used to have.

What's Mike W got to do with this?



If you're saying they don't have a Facebook or Twitter account, isn't this because the target range of CBBC is 6-12 year olds, and you have to be 13 to have an account on Facebook or Twitter, so the BBC could be seen to be endorsing children breaking the rules or something?

THE BBC, it should have said BeeB, I think .


There is the problem CBBC needs go back to 6- 16 years, BP used to cover the upper age limits.

Yeah, and wasn't Grange Hill's axing entirely down to the same age range change? And Byker Grove ended not long beforehand too. Both primarily featured secondary school age children - i.e. the ages they were no longer aiming at.

It's true, I changed the age range and told Blue Peter not to bother - they have no place in today's world!

To be fair to BP the ship is as prominent as it ever was, it is centre stage during the new titles on the logo board (just as it was before).

They've just extended the garden to include a vegetable patch which is about as traditional as it gets.

The appeal being for Children In Need every year is an unfortunate consequence of the show not being as big as it was, which is something all of children's TV has had to adapt to. But it does give a great opportunity to "come together" with the rest of the BBC.

The summer expedition ending I would guess is a consequence of the budget being a fraction of what it was. Plus, you could argue it is no longer a novelty for kids to be able to see "life in other countries" which was the original aim. They shouldn't be keeping old stuff for the sake of it if it has no relevance but I think there was an element of changing features for the sake of it a few years back.

I'm more surprised that they seem to have kept three presenters on, which seems a lot for one show a week. The number of presenters always adapted to the number of eps being broadcast - two in the early days, up to three when it went twice a week, four when it went three times a week and five for the brief period when it was on every day on CBBC.

I see, thanks for that. Just surprised not to hear any calls of on/off air, would have thought it'd be an important call to hear.



Ahh, right I see. I knew about PA/SS stuff, I've actually had the pleasure of working with one, a lady called Joy Monks, when she came in to do a session for the TV production people at the university I used to work at. She was awesome. I put together a film of her at work with our students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLHvQEtgHcc



My bad, terminology is always important

Many thanks for your very detailed answers!

PS, re directors not calling shots, obviously this is only for tightly scripted shows, right? For anything else a Director would need to call a shot to make sure that the cameraman is ready for their shot to be taken, when reacting to stuff you didn't know was going to happen. In which case, surely they'd also have to make the "Ready" call which is more like an American director. So essentially the situation dictates the method used.

In addition they've just done a feature on the 60532 Blue Peter locomotive which they didn't even do much when Richard Marson, the show's de facto archivist, was in charge, so I think it's pretty daft to suggest they do nothing regarding its heritage.

That had nothing to do with the number of episodes aired. IIRC, one of the presenters had a baby, a new one was hired to cover maternity leave and then stayed on. When the next person left, they weren't replaced.

Agree - and making it an hour a week during those series would make it stand out much more in the schedules when it is on. At half an hour a week it gets lost in the schedules.

This is broadly right, although there were examples in the sixties of it being pre-recorded, and the famous example is Lulu the elephant, they've even said on the show now when showing the clip that the episode was pre-recorded because if it had been live it would have already been faded out as it was over-running. At that point in the late sixties, much to Biddy's dismay, they were pre-recording the Thursday show every week for about three months because there weren't enough studios available.

As mentioned, when it went three times a week, the Friday episode was indeed recorded straight after the Wednesday one but all the presenters and crew hated that and it was the first thing Steve Hocking changed when he took over. Certainly the Friday show was love at the turn of the century. When it was five days a week on CBBC but only three on BBC1, there were still only three "proper" shows a week with the other two being re-edits or a full-length film, and one of the CBBC ones was live and repeated the next day on BBC1, I can't remember how it worked now.

When they moved to TC2 as part of the radical revamp in 2007, for a while, when it was two shows a week it used to that they'd be live one week and then the next week's shows would be pre-recorded (a bit like Top of the Pops when it was on Sundays in its final year and one show a month was recorded at the same time as the previous week's). But now I think it's always live when they're doing a proper show at MediaCity, given they invite and read out correspondence on a set topic.



I don't think they ever mentioned specific anniversaries other than the big ones, most obviously because they were not usually on the actual birthday. As for the history, the new title sequence which started last week features the logo on "waves", they had a piece about the Blue Peter steam train the other week and talked about its history, Yvette Fielding was on it on Pancake Day to judge their pancakes (and they showed the famous clip of her), they've just expanded the garden and dd a piece about its history, plus also put their handprints in concrete to go alongside the old presenters which they pointed out, and of course when they did that MI5 competition the other week it was called Project Petra and they explained why. And that's just in the last six months. I don't know how much else they're supposed to do without it becoming a programme about Blue Peter.



Er, not quite, because although Zoe Salmon ostensibly arrived as "cover" for Lovely Liz Barker in 2004, Lovely Liz had actually already come back by the time she started, and then after her arrival, Simon Thomas left and was replaced by Gethin Jones. So they still had five hosts. The reason they didn't replace Lovely Liz when she left was because a) she was irreplacable and b) they weren't doing five days a week on CBBC anymore.

Whatever happened to Liz Barker - not heard anything of her since her Blue Peter days.